Communication devices such as User Equipments (UEs) are enabled to communicate wirelessly in a cellular communications network or wireless communication system, sometimes also referred to as a cellular radio system or cellular networks. The communication may be performed e.g. between two UEs, between a UE and a regular telephone and/or between a UE and a server via a Radio Access Network (RAN) and possibly one or more core networks, comprised within the cellular communications network.
The cellular communications network covers a geographical area which is divided into cell areas, wherein each cell area being served by an Base Transceiver Station (BTS). A cell is the geographical area where radio coverage is provided by the BTS.
The BTS may further control several transmission points, e.g. having Radio Units. A cell can thus comprise one or more BTSs each controlling one or more transmission/reception points. A transmission point, also referred to as a transmission/reception point, is an entity that transmits and/or receives radio signals. The entity has a position in space, e.g. an antenna. A BTS is an entity that controls one or more transmission points. The BTS may also be referred to as a Radio Base Station (RBS), depending on the technology and terminology used. The BTS may be of different classes such as e.g. macro cell, home cell or pico cell, based on transmission power and thereby also cell size.
Further, each BTS may support one or several communication technologies. The BTS communicates over an air interface operating on radio frequencies with the UEs within range of the BTS.
Typically a BTS will have several Transceivers (TRXs) which enables the BTS to serve UEs on several different frequencies and in different sectors of the cell. The BTS is controlled by a Base Station Controller (BSC). The BSC may control the BTS via a Base station Control Function (BCF). The BCF is implemented as a discrete unit or even incorporated in a TRX in compact BTSs. The BCF provides an Operations and Maintenance (O&M) connection to a Network Management System (NMS), which manages operational states of each TRX, as well as software handling and alarm collection.
In order for the BTS to function correctly, HardWare (HW) equipment of the BTS, such as the TRXs, has to be initialized properly in several software databases. These are an Installation DataBase (IDB) in the BTS and an BTS object model in the BSC. When the HW configuration in the BTS is changed, e.g. by adding or removing HW equipment, both databases have to be updated separately, using different tools and different interfaces. In the BSC each BTS is modeled as a set of TRX Managed Objects (MOs), and each TRX MO comprises further MOs, such as Transceivers (TXs), Receivers (RXs) and a plurality of TimeSlots (TSs). In order to be used for traffic, each MO needs to be taken into service and be deblocked. Since the installation of one single TRX requires issuing at least 6 BSC commands with various configuration parameters and a BTS may comprise up to 12 TRXs, this requires a large number of actions from an operator. Additionally a far more extensive configuration in the BTS has to be done, hence the initialization of a new HW configuration is a very time consuming job.
It is also of utmost importance that the configuration in the BSC matches the configuration in the IDB of the BTS, otherwise the HW equipment in the BTS will not work or will work improperly.